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PlumChoice a plum choice for Cross Point in Lowell

By Dan O'Brien, dobrien@lowellsun.com

Updated:
10/02/2012 08:21:42 AM EDT

LOWELL -- In perhaps the most positive news for the Cross Point towers since Motorola arrived six years ago, a rapidly expanding help-desk software company moved 200 jobs from Billerica to Lowell this week.

Founded in 2001, PlumChoice Inc.'s software platform, called SAFElink, allows companies to provide outsourced support for software and technology, such as PCs, peripherals, digital cameras and smartphones.

The city and company are holding a ribbon-cutting and media event today at the new headquarters, on the 11th floor of Tower 3.

"They're a big player, and we're happy to have them," City Manager Bernie Lynch said. "They're bringing 200-plus employees, and they're getting a great space."

PlumChoice CEO Bob Badavas called Lowell the "epicenter" of the company's employee base, adding that the footprint at Cross Point is more conducive to the company's expansion plans.

"The layout of the space allows us to have all of our agents in one room," he said in an interview last week at the company's former headquarters at 5 Federal St., in Billerica. "It's just a better footprint for us and allows for expansion."

For the three-tower complex that was built in the late 1970s to accommodate Wang Laboratories, PlumChoice's arrival is welcome news. According to a recent report from real-estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle, about one-third of Cross Point's 1.28 million square feet is available for lease.

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The average percentage vacancy rate among Interstate 495 North buildings is somewhere in the low 20s, according to various reports.

The Motorola unit that took about 20 percent of the towers' space when it arrived six years ago is now owned by Google Inc.

Lynch said buyouts and consolidations are a key reason vacancy rates fluctuate.

"It's not that companies don't like the space or don't like Lowell," Lynch said of the complex, which is owned by San Francisco-based Divco West. "Companies come here because they are attracted by the location and the amenities it offers. But there have been consolidations that have resulted in businesses moving out."

One recent example is that of Sterling Software, which came to Cross Point in 2006 but was later acquired by IBM. The latter company moved its software businesses to a campus in Westford and Littleton. Another is Dassault Systemes, a French software company that in 2010 combined its Massachusetts operations, including one at Cross Point, to a space in Waltham.

Founded in 2001, PlumChoice has grown rapidly as a private, independent entity.

Inc. Magazine ranked the company 1,079th on its list of 5,000 fastest-growing private companies, with revenues soaring from $11.6 million in 2007 to $44.3 million in 2010, or 280 percent.

Founder Ted Werth was named 2011 Entrepreneur of the Year for New England by Ernst & Young for the technology-services category.

"Our core business is (still) growing 30 percent per year," said Badavas, who took over as president and CEO for Werth in May.

Badavas said the key is the company's ability to support its partners' efforts to maintain loyalty from their customers.

PlumChoice partners with retailers, telecom carriers and other companies to provide help-desk services for its clients' customers. To do so, it deploys hundreds of employees it calls "agents," many of whom now work from Cross Point, to field phone calls and resolve tech problems.

Badavas said that while in other remote-help organizations the first responder may have limited skills, at PlumChoice, the agent who takes the call "is it."

"They're all well trained in the technology," so that calls don't have to be forwarded to higher levels of expertise, he said.

PlumChoice has raised about $65 million in venture capital. It also has offices in Colorado and in Sweden.

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